Westfield is the largest mall operator in the world (by revenue) and owns some of the most valuable real estate in some of the most glamorous city centers in nearly every continent. So when it's CMO of it's North America group wanted help repositioning the brand for today's consumer, who can order anything that a mall sells from a phone app without leaving the couch, we were excited to help take on the challenge. 

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Initially hired just to update the Westfield brand guidelines and style guide to make it more useful and consistent (the existing version had been an enormous document with conflicting instructions, unclear use-cases and impractical marketing templates and examples), the first questions we had were about how to position the brand and what its key messaging pillars were... after all, in order to define the creative elements needed for clearer communication, we must first define what the brand should communicate and to whom. This led us into an engaging exploration with the CMO using the Matli Positioning Methodology as a framework to guide the conversation; 

...what unique value does Westfield bring in an age where consumers no longer need to go to a mall to do their shopping?

The positioning process crystalized the CMOs vision for Westfield's future, resulting in the key insight that people go to Westfield centers as an entertainment destination, not strictly to shop. The company had already been investing in producing events like fashion shows, cooking demonstrations, wine and food tastings, movie nights and all manner of other community outreach to bring customers in, but it had thought of these things as grafted-on lead generation exercises... whereas in reality todays consumer mainly went to the mall to meet with friends and be entertained. The entertainment aspect of a Westfield center was now its core value proposition; a physical place where people of all generations could meet with friends and family and where everyone, no matter who they were or how old they were, could find something fun and interesting to do or see or participate in. From movie theaters to make-up counters to story hours, the customer could get an experience impossible to duplicate on Amazon or in WalMart... and it was free. But you could make a whole day of it – and you were surrounded by your favorite stores selling your favorite things. 

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For smaller markets, Westfield brought the world's latest fashions, trends, films, books and occasionally even celebrities to your small town in a way that Facebook never could. You could see the same things that people in New York or Paris could see; buy the same products and experience the same entertainment... it was a physical connection to the world. 

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All this helped define the new positioning and messaging pillars of Westfield North America, and we codified it into a simple, scalable marketing platform in the form of brand and marketing guidelines. The Guide was created with clear, specific instructions and open-ended templates so that a General Manager in a small regional mall could hire an inexpensive freelancer to create marketing materials promoting a cat adoption event with the same panache as Westfield San Francisco City Centre might promote a celebrity-studded fundraising gala.